The haunting moment an heiress wed a convicted fraudster, who would later take her life to seize a £4.4million fortune, has been unearthed for the first time.
Arriving at Peckforton Castle, a grand estate nestled in the picturesque Cheshire countryside, Paula Leeson, glowing with happiness, stepped out of a vintage car with her father by her side, embodying the quintessential joyful bride.
Yet unbeknownst to Paula and her family, her newlywed husband, Donald McPherson, was a seasoned fraudster with numerous aliases, and his previous wife and their daughter had perished under suspicious circumstances.
Mother-of-one Ms Leeson – regarded as frugal and unflashy by friends – was also unaware that he had secretly taken out £2.5million in life insurance that would pay out in the event of her death.
Just three years later, 47-year-old Ms Leeson’s fully-clothed body would be found in a swimming pool less than 4ft deep at a chalet in a remote part of Denmark which he had booked for them.
Her family back in Manchester were immediately suspicious at how his story kept changing, knowing that she disliked swimming.
But although New Zealand-born McPherson was charged with murder after British police stepped in, he was later dramatically cleared on the direction of a judge in a criminal case.
A Daily Mail investigation later revealed how – unbeknown to the jury in his murder trial – he had been jailed over a £12million bank fraud in Germany in 2006.
In addition, his previous wife died along with their four-year-old daughter during a mysterious fire while he was behind bars.
Now a feature-length Channel 5 documentary about Ms Leeson’s fight for justice which is being screened this week has uncovered poignant and never-before-seen footage of the couple’s 2014 wedding.
Coming after a ‘whirlwind’ romance in spite of her family’s suspicions, the ceremony was described in court as ‘a grand affair’ where ‘no expense was spared’.
It shows a beaming Ms Leeson, in a white wedding gown, arriving in a vintage car with her father, Willy, before embracing McPherson, in a purple shirt and tie to match the bride’s bouquet.
In one particularly poignant scene, he is filmed unwrapping an expensive watch, a gift from Ms Leeson, and saying to the camera: ‘Oh my gosh Paula, you shouldn’t have.’
Ms Leeson is also seen reading from McPherson’s letter to her: ‘And now the journey commences. I love you with all my heart. Now and forever and ever.
‘Thank you for coming into my life. You make me feel so very special. I love you and I am proud to be your husband. All my love, Don.’
McPherson had no family, or even friends, at the lavish wedding.
At the last minute he claimed that his best man, from New Zealand, had to cancel because his wife had died in child birth.
Funding an extravagant lifestyle thanks to the largesse of Ms Leeson – whose family own a successful civil engineering business – he continued amassing life policies which by the time of her death stood to pay out £3.2million.
Following the collapse of the murder trial in 2021, Ms Leeson’s furious family condemned him as ‘the devil incarnate’ and pledged never to stop fighting for justice – and to stop him getting his hands on the money.
After bringing a civil case against McPherson at the High Court in Manchester, the family last year secured a ruling that he had unlawfully killed Ms Leeson.
It heard that McPherson was ‘a serial liar’ who had been convicted of 32 offences of fraud or dishonesty in New Zealand, Germany and the UK.
In his ruling last September, Mr Justice Richard Smith said: ‘The court has decided that Donald McPherson deliberately and unlawfully killed Paula by compressing her neck in an arm lock, rendering her unconscious and causing her body to fall into the pool, ensuring her drowning and death.
‘His motive for killing Paula was clear – money.’
The judge also said McPherson had forged signatures of a witness on his wife’s will, which he ruled invalid, and ordered he forfeit any claim to the multi-million pound joint life insurance policies he secretly took out on his wife behind her back.
It means McPherson – who by then had left the country – will never get his hands on either the insurance payout, trust funds worth a further £800,000, or joint money and property worth £506,000 in her estate.
Following their victory in the civil courts, Ms Leeson’s family urged police and prosecutors to re-open the case and pursue the ‘evil, dangerous fraudster’ for murder.
Their lawyers subsequently sent what they described as ‘new and compelling evidence’ of McPherson’s guilt to police in the hope of securing a retrial.
It has been passed to the Crown Prosecution Service for it to consider, a coroner in Stockport was told last year.
The long-established legal principle of double jeopardy was scrapped in 2005, allowing police and prosecutors to seek a retrial of a defendant who has previously been acquitted if there is new and compelling evidence.
McPherson, now 50, was not legally represented at the civil trial and has not commented on the judge’s ruling.
Ms Leeson’s family are understood to have agreed to release the wedding footage in a bid to warn other women to beware of McPherson.
‘The main reason that we’re doing this film is to make his face as famous as possible in as many far-flung corners of the world, so that there’s nowhere for him to hide,’ David Jones, head of legal at law firm Glaisyers ETL who represented the family in the civil trial, told Channel 5.
The fraudster – who claimed to be a successful property developer but was in reality £65,000 in debt – had booked the Denmark trip despite his wife hating swimming and preferring city breaks.
According to prosecutors at his murder trial, within hours of her death he was ‘tucking into’ a steak dinner after transferring more than £20,000 from their joint account to start covering his debts.
But halfway through the trial at Manchester Crown Court, Mr Justice Goose directed a verdict of not guilty to murder after prosecutors were unable to disprove McPherson’s defence that she had fallen in or jumped.
That was despite the judge ruling that it was ‘clearly more likely’ that her New Zealand-born husband had killed her than the alternative explanation that her death was an accident.
Following his acquittal, McPherson insisted his wife’s death had been ‘a tragic accident’.
The feature length documentary, The Drowning of Paula Leeson, will air Wednesday 30th April, 8pm on 5.
